Understanding Algorithmic Discrimination in Health Economics Through the Lens of Measurement Errors

Anirban Basu, Noah Hammarlund, Sara Khor and Aasthaa Bansal

No 29413, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: There is growing concern that the increasing use of machine learning and artificial intelligence-based systems may exacerbate health disparities through discrimination. We provide a hierarchical definition of discrimination consisting of algorithmic discrimination arising from predictive scores used for allocating resources and human discrimination arising from allocating resources by human decision-makers conditional on these predictive scores. We then offer an overarching statistical framework of algorithmic discrimination through the lens of measurement errors, which is familiar to the health economics audience. Specifically, we show that algorithmic discrimination exists when measurement errors exist in either the outcome or the predictors, and there is endogenous selection for participation in the observed data. The absence of any of these phenomena would eliminate algorithmic discrimination. We show that although equalized odds constraints can be employed as bias-mitigating strategies, such constraints may increase algorithmic discrimination when there is measurement error in the dependent variable.

JEL-codes: C53 I10 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-hea
Note: EH TWP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29413.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29413

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29413

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().